Bay Area Cancer Connections offers information and support to people touched by breast and ovarian cancer. Our comprehensive lending library, educational brochures, and medical information specialist service are integral to the organization’s work – helping patients and loved ones to find accurate medical information that can guide their care.

Through the project Finding Reliable Health Information Online, funded by the NN/LM PSR Express Outreach Awards program, we sought to increase health information literacy and awareness of MedlinePlus among members of the breast and ovarian cancer communities, minority healthcare trainees, and members of minority communities. We did this through a series of health information literacy training sessions and outreach exhibits. Working collaboratively with partner organizations, we delivered an educational presentation at a public library and at a community non-profit agency that provides vocational training for healthcare workers. We also offered this session as an in-service training for Bay Area Cancer Connections Helpline volunteers, and for our clients and members of the public. Through lecture, exercises, and discussion, participants learned how to critically evaluate health information and to use MedlinePlus as their go-to site for discovering quality health information. Health information literacy and MedlinePlus awareness also became a component of our regular outreach calendar.

In numeric terms, we planned six outreach exhibits and completed more than 20, reaching more individuals than we had hoped. We also completed the four educational events we had proposed. The most rewarding outcomes we saw were in the organizational relationships we developed and deepened over the course of the project. Internally, this project helped to strengthen bonds between the Bay Area Cancer Connections library and our Marketing and Volunteer Resources departments, as we collaborated on outreach work. We also formed a new external partnership with the Mountain View Public Library, our organization’s first public library partnership and one on which we hope to build.

Getting to know the staff and resources at our RML was invaluable as well, and we are confident that the relationships we have developed in the course of this project will be helpful as we plan our health information literacy and outreach work for the future. Funding from this project allowed two staff members to attend a PubMed for Trainers class, which has boosted our research skills.

Although we designed this project with an understanding that MedlinePlus and health information literacy instruction are important, it was striking to see the extent of the need. Most training session participants were unfamiliar with MedlinePlus prior to the session; those who had used the site had used only a small subset of its features and were grateful to learn more. The project staff noted that it would have been beneficial to vary the pace of our educational sessions more to suit the information literacy level of our audiences. And organizationally, we believe we could have done more to promote off-site events in-house, and better clarified mutual expectations with our project partners. Our award period has ended, but our outreach and MedlinePlus promotion continue, and we are looking forward to building on this project in the future!

I received professional development support from the NN/LM Pacific Southwest Region to attend the one-day symposium Teaching and Learning in New Library Spaces: The Changing Landscape of Health Sciences Libraries on April 18 in Philadelphia. During the meeting I presented one of four Lightning Talks, Listening to Students and Creating a Collaborative Environment. My presentation was a brief story about how a small health sciences library used an annual survey to develop a student-centric library focus. (more…)

With support from the NN/LM PSR Express Outreach Awards program, an interdisciplinary team from the University of San Francisco has created EnviRN-Evidence, a new freely accessible online learning program which introduces nurses, nursing students, nursing faculty, and any other interested parties to important environmental health topics. This resource also includes instruction on how to use the National Library of Medicine’s TOXNET databases to find authoritative environmental health evidence and patient education resources. (more…)

I received NN/LM PSR professional development support to attend the one-day symposium Teaching and Learning in New Library Spaces: The Changing Landscape of Health Sciences Libraries in Philadelphia on Monday, April 18. The meeting was co-sponsored by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Middle Atlantic Region (NN/LM MAR); the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL); and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Southeastern/Atlantic Region (NN/LM SE/A). The day opened with a discussion of findings from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) strategic forecast for academic medicine, which was followed by a panel of experts from various disciplines, who envisioned new teaching and learning spaces for libraries, based on the AAMC report. In the afternoon there was a presentation on design trends in academic libraries, and how even modest changes can make a big impact. A panel discussion Reducing the Footprint, Expanding the Neighborhood featured a discussion by library leaders about their experiences in converting space reductions into opportunities for new partnerships and programming. The day concluded with contributed Lightning Talks, with participants sharing their renovation experiences, focusing on practical examples, best practices, and lessons learned. The workshop was very well attended, with 140 participants from 29 states. (more…)

Today the National Library of Medicine announced five-year cooperative agreement awards for eight institutions to serve as Regional Medical Libraries (RMLs) and five National Coordinating Offices (DOCLINE, web services, training, evaluation and public health) in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM). The agreements begin May 1, 2016. The Network consists of the eight RMLs, five National Coordinating Offices, nearly 112 resource libraries (primarily at medical schools), over 2,200 local health science libraries (primarily at hospitals), and more than 1,300 public libraries and community-based organizations. The UCLA Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library will continue to serve as the RML for the Pacific Southwest Region, which includes Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and U.S. Territories in the Pacific Basin. A complete list of awarded institutions is available on the NLM web site. (more…)

On March 4, 2016, I had the pleasure of co-presenting a paper at the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (NACNS) 2016 Annual Conference in Philadelphia with my colleague, Lianna Ansryan, a clinical nurse specialist. The paper, The Future is Today: Inspiring Nurses to Write (I-WIN) is the description of a program collaboration between the Nursing Department and the Medical Library at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. (more…)

With assistance from a professional development award received from NN/LM PSR, I was able to attend the Systematic Review Workshop: The Nuts and Bolts for Librarians held at the University of Pittsburgh on November 16-18, 2015. This 2.5 day workshop was designed to help educate librarians on the systematic review process and prepare them to become involved with this type of research. Over the course of the workshop, the five amazing instructors covered everything related to systematic reviews, including the reference interview, study design, bias, term harvesting, grey literature, documentation and much more. This workshop was an in-depth crash course on a librarian’s role with systematic reviews. By the end of the workshop, the 25 attendees had a solid foundation of knowledge that would help them conduct future systematic reviews. (more…)

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) funded six HIV/AIDS Community Information Outreach Projects in September 2015, in the 22nd round of the program. NLM has continued its HIV/AIDS-related outreach efforts to community-based organizations, patient advocacy groups, faith-based organizations, departments of health, and libraries. This program provides support to design local programs for improving information access for HIV/AIDS patients and the affected community, as well as their caregivers. Congratulations to all the recipients! (more…)